The team is worth billions.
The beginning of any sports season whether it is baseball, football, basketball, hockey or soccer brings with it an annual financial valuation of teams. It generally is an exercise in futility as the truth is this. A sports franchise is worth whatever a potential owner thinks it is worth. For what it is worth, Sportico put out its annual Major League Baseball individual team valuation list and the Steinbrenner family-owned New York Yankees franchise remains king of the hill, top of the heap. According to Sportico, if Hal Steinbrenner and his partners wanted to sell the Yankees business, Steinbrenner and his partners could get $9.4 billion. Meanwhile if Miami Marlins owner Bruce Sherman wanted to dispose of his business, he could only get $1.45 billion in return. It seems the death of a number of regional cable TV sports networks has had no impact on the valuations.
The Los Angeles Dodgers franchise comes in second at $9.05 billion. When Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley left New York for Los Angeles in 1957, the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers franchises were the top two revenue producers and with Dan Topping’s Yankees the most valuable baseball team and O’Malley’s Dodgers as the second most valuable baseball team. Four teams are worth more than $6 billion, Steinbrenner’s Yankees, the Dodgers, John Henry’s Boston Red Sox business which comes in at $6.65 billion and the Ricketts’ family Chicago Cubs business at $6.48 billion. The top ten is rounded out with San Francisco at 5, Atlanta sixth, Philadelphia at number 7, Houston is eighth. It is very hard to believe that Steve Cohen’s New York Mets business is worth six billion less than Steinbrenner’s Yankees at $3.58 billion at 9 and San Diego is 10. According to Sportico franchise values are up 12 percent, but that’s just on the website’s paper.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
